Behavioral Economics and Banking – (Tech Review)

“There was a designer somewhere in the process who has thought about every single touch point, every single aspect, and has just made every single moment as valid, as graceful, as appropriate, as possible,” he says. BankSimple is due to launch this year.

To design the experience, they looked for insights from behavioral economics, which relies on psychology to understand economic decisions. For instance, it’s easier to get people to try something if they have to opt out of it rather than opt in. The team applied this insight to a feature of the bank that allows people to set aside funds toward a particular goal; it’s not a separate account, just a line highlighted on the screen with a label like “Hawaii trip” or “new laptop.” To encourage customers to try the feature, BankSimple starts them with the goal of saving $1,000 in an emergency fund.

There is something magical about taking a different tack on an existing problem. This sounds very appealing, but I wonder what happens to the user enthusiasm the first time all that hidden complexity surfaces in a SNAFU.